Peppa Pig Birthday Cake

One of the "helpers" at Oliver's nursery asked me to make her a cake for her little girl's birthday. Seemingly, Sally thought I made cakes for a living, when in reality - I've never ever made one for anyone else before !

I agreed to make her a cake for Holly's 2nd birthday as a one off, on the promise that my name does not get passed around for taking cake orders.

Holly (like Oliver) loves Peppa Pig - so we discussed that I could do whatever I liked as long as it was Peppa Pig themed. I've no idea what Sally was expecting - but I so wish I'd seen the look on her face when she opened the box !

I made this using our SAY IT WITH CAKE letter moulds and got it completed at 3.45am last Friday morning. I then got a couple of hours sleep and had to get up at 6.30am to go and catch the plane with Oliver to take a weekend break up in Scotland.

My husband got the job of taking it to work with him so Sally could collect it on the Friday. The cake board shown here is cut from a piece of clear acrylic covered in rolled fondant and was 500mm x 350mm. Cake would serve about 25 > 30 portions by the time it was sliced

Fun to do, but I did stresss out a lot over doing a cake for someone by request. Icing is still a little wet in areas as it WAS 3.45am that morning when I took the photos. I would have liked the text underneath to have been over a bit - but hey - It's not BAD for the first cake I've ever made for someone else...

I belive it went down well .....   :-)

1kg of fondant covered approx 5 letters. Cake was a 6 egg basic sponge mix.

Sarah-Jane Nash, http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ - designer of SAY IT WITH CAKE letter cake pans !

Blog Anniversary, Launch of LETTER MOULDS & a GIVEAWAY !!!!

Well - I can hardly believe it. Thursday 13th of January marks my first anniversary of blogging !

It actually feels a long time ago, probably since I've been cataloguing Oliver's antics with me in the kitchen. He's grown up SO much in the last year and now loves to be involved. He'll often even tell me it's time to take pictures !

This is also an exicting time for me as I'm now ready to start launching my brand new designs of silcone bakeware. It has been a huge project which has taken an unbelievable amount or research and time to sort out and produce. However, I'm pleased to be able to announce that you can now buy our SAY IT WITH CAKE moulds not only as the set words - but as individual letters and numbers.

The photo at the top was one I made for a Yorkshire Tea competition. I've not showcased it on the blog before - but it was really fun to make and won me some free cakes from Yorkshire Tea. They seemed to like it and Tweeted the photo too !

This next one was for a bit of a giggle. If you click on the photo to make it bigger, you'll get a bit better view.

I can't remember what type of cake it was - but it was for halloween and never made it to the blog....

It was covered it in buttercream and crushed Lotus biscuits to give a sand like effect. Don't worry - the black spiders are PLASTIC - I promise :-P

You may well recognise the photo of our C A K E cake above (REGISTERED DESIGN). We've been producing that silicone bakeware mould for a few years and it's very very popular. Hundreds upon hundred of you have these and rave to us about them all the time - yet few people review their purchases on our website. Can I request you perhaps leave us reviews on your purchases ? We love to here all your comments... whatever they may be.

Daily, we've been getting requests for custom made moulds to create names or words in cake for birthdays, anniversaries and other various celebrations. This just was not logistically possible. However, we're now making ALL 26 letters of the alphabet as single letters or as a set. Numbers are also now available too !

Our online webshop (shipping worldwide) is www.siliconemoulds.com

Find us on Ebay too as  NATURALHEATING

So - whatever you want to say... it's now possible :

HAPPY 21ST JACOB

JUST MARRIED
PIECE OF CAKE

EAT ME

BAKED TO PERFECTION

The list is truly endless ! You get the idea....

I've had a fab idea for my friend's birthday. I want to make her a cake that says VICTORIA'S SPONGE. Tee hee.

Darn - now I've told you that - I bet I'll find the blog entry before it's her birthday !

Also available in our range are set words : HAPPY, BIRTH, DAYS and CAKE. It often works out a little cheaper to start with those and then buy the additional letters you need. Those moulds are perfectly suitable to chop into individual letters.

These moulds are very flexible and you DO need to put them on a baking sheet in the oven. Around 8 single letter moulds will generally fit on a standard baking sheet.

Each letter is approx 115mm / 4.1/2" long, various widths (W and M are the biggest), 40mm / 1.1/2" deep

To ensure perfect release every time with letters and numbers (any tricky shapes) DO very lightly grease and flour (tapping out any excess before filling) every time you use them

Guides to words moulds :

http://siliconemoulds.blogspot.com/2010/10/say-it-with-cake-happy-birthday-to-me.html - fancy

http://siliconemoulds.blogspot.com/2010/01/cake-cake.html - basic

http://siliconemoulds.blogspot.com/2010/06/happy-days-banana-cake.html - double layered

And so..... to our GIVEAWAY ..... for one ALPHABET set of SAY IT WITH CAKE moulds.

 

To enter, you need to be a blog follower and leave a comment with what word or phrase you'll like to make out of this set :-)

 

For an additional entry, put a wall posting on our Facebook page or Tweet about our giveaway / fabulous new silicone bakeware cake moulds.

 

I'll get Oliver to pick a random entry out of his dumper truck next Thusday !?!

 

Good Luck

Say it with Cake - Happy Birthday (to me !) GUIDE

Happy Birthday to me

Happy Birthday to me

So ridiculous to make yourself a birthday cake !!

Basically, it was just a good excuse to have a practise run for making Oliver a cake later in the month for when he turns two.

I've NEVER used fondant to cover a cake before - so there was always going to have to be a first time.....

I designed our first Say it With Cake WORD mould (CAKE) a couple of years ago - and it has proven to be very popular with our customers. You can see a guide about it here. A few months ago, I introduced some other word moulds - HAPPY, BIRTH and DAYS.

You can either put the words together to get a HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CAKE DAYS, HAPPY DAYS - or mix and match as I have done to make SARAH. You can easily cut the silicone word cakes up into individual letters for easier use when mix and matching.

I always knew that everyone would want "other" letters to make words and names that these four WORDS moulds cannot complete. The logistics behind producing these has been awkward and very costly.... However, it's been in the pipeline for some months now and you'll be able to get your hands on them soon !

Individual letters and numbers are going to all be available. It will work out a bit more expensive per letter than buying the combined letter sets HAPPY, BIRTH, DAYS and CAKE. Where possible, I'd suggest you might want to start with a core word, chop it up and buy the additional letters required singly. 

The individual letters and number moulds are starting to come out of production. They will not be available for sale until late November and at the moment estimated price will be around £1.50 per letter / number.

Ideal for making personalised cakes. Little effort required, as they look SUPER just dusted with icing sugar and filled with jam and cream. I'm hoping to get my hands on the first ones off production in time to make an "Oliver's 2nd Birthday" cake at the end of this month.... or something along those lines

Do be warned - you'll need to make a cake board from plywood or similar and cover it for more than 4 letters, or opt for acrylic as I've done. I've had a selection of acrylic cake boards made for my own use from Trent Plastics - who will cut to size as required. They were not expensive (this one was just £3.50). To do CONGRATULATIONS which is a really long cake, you would be best to use a 1500mm x 200mm board which in acrylic is just £10.62. Pretty good value if you ask me !

To make the above cake, I cheated a bit. I got some premix from the local commercial bakery to try - it's what they use as a genoise sponge base to make all their celebration cakes. Basically, you just weigh out the premix and add oil and water. Mix with a wooden spoon for a minute or two and it's ready.

It actually tastes great and drastically cuts down the work. I'm thinking about stocking it after Christmas to sell in pre-bagged amounts. It would be ideal for using with big cakes such as the giant muffin and the castle for making birthday cakes - as making massive batches of home made cake mix can be terribly time consuming.

I made up just enough for 6 letters - which gave me one letter to use as a practise piece.

Here is a baked letter B in the mould. Always grease (I like to use butter) and flour the mould before use for easy release.

After the cake has suitably cooled, I used a serrated bread knife and carefully sliced the domed top off to level the underside of the cake, as the bottom should become the top.

I made a template strip from a piece of card the same depth as the mould. After rolling out the fondant, I placed this on top and cut out a big long strip to use for the edges of the cake. I brushed the cake with warm jam and then applied the edges. Letter S was the hardest. I had to use a skewer and a teaspoon handle to coax the fondant into the inside curves of the S.

I then drew round the outside of the silicone letter mould and made a cardboard template of the actual letter. This could then be placed onto fondant to cut out the shape.

After cutting out the letter, I placed it on top of the cake with sides already attached. Using fingertips and some cold water in a bowl - I smoothed over the icing until the joints fused and all but disappeared.

After that, it was time for a little extra decoration with some stamped fondant shapes and edible glitter. My fondant looks a little orange peel like - but I'm sure I'll improve with practise !

 I put the cake in our spare room last night to hide it. Oliver hasn't seen it yet - but he'll love helping to blow out candles later once he gets up. As all the toddlers at nursery have been having birthdays over the last few weeks - he sings Happy Birthday at least several times a day since he's learnt the words and tune :-)

Sarah-Jane Nash (another year older !) - silicone bakeware mould specialist cook shop - http://www.siliconemoulds.com/